Influence of Music on Closed Motor Skills: A Controlled Study with Novice Female Dart-Throwers

The influence of music heard at different tempos is analyzed during the execution of a dart-throwing task. The sample consisted of 56 female university students (Mean age = 23.38, SD = 6.773). The participants were randomly assigned to GC (group control without music; n = 18), GS (group with slow-paced music at a tempo of 60 BPM; n = 19) and GF (group with fast-paced music at a tempo of 105 BPM; n = 19). All participants performed a dart-throwing task in two phases. Analysis of the scores obtained during Phase 1 and Phase 2 of dart throwing (examining both between-group differences and within-group differences, i.e., changes in scores from Phase 1 to Phase 2 using a mixed factorial ANOVA) revealed no differences in dart-throwing scores. There were, however, differences in execution time, where the participants in GS needed more time to complete the task than those in GF (F((2,55)) = 4.426, p = 0.017) with a large effect size (ŋ(2)(p) = 0.143), although neither of these groups differed from GC. The results are discussed in terms of the role of music in precision tasks and the synchronization of the task with the pace of the music.